A weekly musical treasure basket for parents and young children from 0-5 years
This pilot project funded by The National Lottery, explored using ‘musical play’ to support families – promoting positive attachment between parents, babies and young children alongside increasing access to social inclusion.
Early childhood is a really important time to provide all children with rich musical environments. This weekly group supported child-initiated play with adults as musical play partners.
Playing Together was co-constructed with the community and our partners at Play Torbay. It was quickly established as a successful, well attended weekly open, inclusive, supported play session with a musical focus for families in Torquay.
We hold a wealth of experience working in early childhood, and understand the value of using music to help build relationships, addressing issues surrounding inclusion at the earliest stage. This project grew out of a developing relationship with Play Torbay.
Sessions used an emergent planning framework based around a cycle of child observation, discussion, reflection and co-creation.
Each session began with open-ended exploration/musical play centred around a musical provocation, with adults as active play partners.
Parents were introduced to this concept and support staff modeled how to actively engage.
The second half of the session was about group music making and singing together.
A creative musical space came to life.
Staff reflected together at the end of each session about what they noticed and about how they might develop sessions next.
Together, we discovered that Music can support the development of listening and language skills and that singing between mums and babies is felt to encourage and build attachment. This project increased parents’ playful support of their children. A co-creation process involved everyone in the design of these family sessions. Strong, equal and trusting relationships grew between young people, group participants and facilitators. This collaborative, nurturing atmosphere was helpful to everyone as the pandemic hit and contributed to our managing to maintain support!
When Covid-19 restricted face-to-face delivery, we responded in a considered way. Working online, through screens didn’t sit well with our pedagogical approach to Early Years. We developed a digital offer that felt authentic to us, remained in keeping with prioritising child-led play in creative, musical environments and which proved to be a lasting and useful set of resources for families, educators and early years settings during the pandemic. The interactive online resources are still here.
